YEEEY ! I have a lady friend from Sta Rosa, CA whos got a large specimen(see pic) of this orchid and promised to mount for me several mature blooming sized bulbs...hopefully I can grow it and well and make it bloom.
Ron, I will have to ask your expert opinion on this and will be forever grateful...
No worries Ron, she grew that for more than 10 years...I am worried that I have to start from zero on my plant and hope to grow it like her specimen...you on the other hand have a well established and its bllomed already...all you need to do is make it grow larger
I think, Paul, that I was looking at the whole flower, ...
If you will indulge my highly active imagination, I may be able to help you to "see" the role of that too ........
Looking at the dorsal sepal, imagine if you will the wing tips of the bat coming together/touching as the bat's wings -- having reached the apex of their upward trajectory -- are beginning their down stroke. You now get the one large dorsal sepal (two wings "touching" from wing tip to wrist) with the dark veins being the elongated finger bones of the bat's hands which in bats provides the struts/framework for the stretched wing membrane. (Sort of like a hang glider or a kite, or the KittyHawk.)
The two "claws" -- one on either side of the bat's "head" -- would be the thumbs that all bats have. Here they are coming down and forward as the bat pulls its wings downwards.
The two fused lower sepals would be the bat's tail flap which joins from one hind leg to the actual tail to the other leg -- with the two extending protuberences being the feet. This membrane acts both as rudder for the bat (just like birds use their tail feathers) as well as a bug catching basket for many of the insectivorous bats. The widest area of the fused lower sepals could even be viewed as a very fat bat belly with the feet and tail membrane being where those sepals taper down to the two "feet".
Thanks, as always, for commenting, Rosie. Maybe Paul should be enlisted to interpret all the pictures that are posted here on OB. He has an imagination that doesn't quit.
Ron!
I got very excited when this arrived today.
It caught me by surprise its such a tiny plant!
(my bulbo was tiny=see my earlier post "Bulbophyllum catenulatum in bloom"; but now this Lepanthes is my smallest orchid)
It has several keikis and two spikes.
I will post pics when it opens its blooms.
Sorry I only have my iPhone shots...I cant do a photographic presentation as magnificent as you.
I can only avail of the sun ourdoors on the street with the sidewalk trees as background...iPhone doesnt relate to indoor lighting.
Lepanthes nycteris arriving soon
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